sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself like
a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier's coat,
who, from first to last, never emitted the slightest sound.

"It was very dark on the quarter deck of the _Ferndale_ between the deep
bulwarks overshadowed by the break of the poop and frowned upon by the
front of the warehouse. I plumped down on to my chest near the after
hatch as if my legs had been jerked from under me. I felt suddenly very
tired and languid. The ship-keeper, whom I could hardly make out hung
over the capstan in a fit of weak pitiful coughing. He gasped out very
low 'Oh! dear! Oh! dear!' and struggled for breath so long that I got up
alarmed and irresolute.

"I've been took like this since last Christmas twelvemonth. It ain't
nothing."

"He seemed a hundred years old at least. I never saw him properly
because he was gone ashore and out of sight when I came on deck in the
morning; but he gave me the notion of the feeblest creature that ever
breathed. His voice was thin like the buzzing of a mosquito. As it
would have been cruel to demand assistance from such a shadowy wreck I
went to work myself, dragging my chest along a pitch-black passage under
the poop deck, while he sighed and moaned around me as if my exertions
were more than his weakness could stand. At last as I banged pretty
heavily against the bulkheads he warned me in his faint breathless wheeze
to be more careful.

"What's the matter?" I asked rather roughly, not relishing to be
admonished by this forlorn broken-down ghost.